Anaheim, USA november 29th

Posted November 28, 200816 yr

After almost 3 weeks of illness Celine will hit the stage again in Anaheim :yahoo:

Good to have her back :wub:

Edited November 28, 200816 yr by SuuS

November 30, 200816 yr

Author

It seemed to have been a great night. She is not 100% yet but she has been away for almost 4 weeks so u cant blame her for that.

She didnt sing the queen medley but she did do all the other songs. Same outfits as well. No changes there.

Soms short clips:

IACBTMN http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2PXmkbuFD4&eurl=

RDMH http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxiGXpX0itk&eurl=

MHWGO http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKNou0PJN20&eurl=

December 1, 200816 yr

Author

Sunday, November 30, 2008
Céline Dion aims for something fresh in Anaheim
And half of her Honda Center show achieved it, helping to put away the Vegas years.
By BEN WENER

Céline Dion's astoundingly popular Caesars Palace show "A New Day …" may have been instrumental in revitalizing Sin City shows this decade, and raking in nearly $400 million in just under five years it certainly made everyone involved very wealthy. But its Cirque du Soleil dazzle ultimately didn't change the age-old adage – that Las Vegas is where entertainers go to die.

Look who headlines the big rooms there now: Barry Manilow, Bette Midler, Cher, Elton John. All certifiable legends starring in pleasing productions, yet all of them are well past their prime (although Elton is still capable of surprising).

Now Céline … she may be a born square, albeit one with an irrefutably tremendous voice, as Saturday night's fan-delighting, critic-confounding performance at Honda Center, her first appearance at the arena in a decade, reminded again and again.

She takes to schmaltz naturally – bombastic dramatics her forté – often seeming to sing the same sentiments in ballads designed to showcase those golden pipes. She really doesn't exhibit a deep desire to reinvent herself: "Taking Chances," her 13th English-language album, issued a month before she let the sun set on "A New Day …," simply slathers gallons of Big '80s paint all over her patented pop, replete with a faithful retread of Heart's big belter from that era, "Alone."

Yet, though Céline is no chameleon, just a gifted diva in sequined mini-dresses, the momentum of her career needn't slow to a self-contented standstill. Just 40, she's at least two decades younger than her Vegas counterparts, with a world waiting to be wowed with fresh moves, if not material. Sticking at Caesars, then, even with a revamped show, would have led to creative rot – the equivalent of letting the muscles in her still-lithe body atrophy.

So it's much to the Canadian chanteuse's credit that this year, rather than merely racking up taller and taller stacks of cash by providing repeat business at the Colosseum, she instead started racking up equally tall stacks of cash by returning to the road with a flashy yet relatively toned-down in-the-round production. Directed by Jamie King, known for work with Madonna, Christina Aguilera and the Spice Girls, it's a colorful yet never gaudy and almost gimmick-free experience clearly devised to focus on Celine's vocal prowess while attempting to contemporize her once more.

Does it succeed? Depends on how you look at it.

On one hand, I don't think many of her middle-age admirers really care if she keeps pace with the times and be believed as a mature Aguilera with cross-generational appeal.

The easily excited woman in front of me just about broke her wrists from clapping when she heard the opening notes of "The Power of Love" two songs into Saturday's set. And the elated cheers that erupted throughout the sold-out arena when "It's All Coming Back to Me Now" segued seamlessly into "Because You Loved Me," or when she re-emerged in a feather-trimmed black gown for a candlelit "My Heart Will Go On" to conclude the performance – those screams were almost deafening to the point that you'd have thought 17,000 'tween girls just spotted a Jonas Brother. (Click here for a complete set list.)

People like that didn't pay upwards of $200 a seat because they wanted to hear Céline sing six songs they don't remember from her last album. People like that don't want her to evolve and adapt. They want hits and more hits, and they get ticked when they realize "Beauty and the Beast" and "Where Does My Heart Beat Now?" were left off the list.

And they don't wish, as I do, that she would please give the fist-pumping, limb-stiffening cheerleader moves a rest whenever she effortlessly nails a big finish or gives off chills with one of her unholy high notes, like the key-change clincher in her remake of "All by Myself" – so stunning yet so cheapened by all that oh-so-determined flailing about.

Her fans eat that stuff up, and they think it's cute when she mugs for the camera. (Cue the end of "Alone" Saturday night. She slinks through some David Lee Roth high kicks. Then she winks. Kisses her thumb. Weirdly wags the tip of it at the camera, points indiscriminately at someone and smiles. And you thought Sarah Palin was a put-on.)

I found her most enchanting when she was at her most vulnerable. I don't buy that she takes everything as seriously as she made it seem while introducing the starkly hopeful Linda Perry song "My Love." But this Anaheim gig was her first show after a month of health-related postponements – "and I just want you to know I'm extremely nervous." Rarely have I heard the phrase "happy to be here" and felt more like a performer actually meant it.

But I know I'm the odd Céline-basher out here. I'd rather ingest hot coals than hear "Because You Loved Me" again, and I was heading for the exit the second I knew her "Titanic" claptrap was ending. Yet I robustly applaud her valiant efforts to show new sides – the smoothed-over Shakira feel of "Eyes on Me," for instance, or how "Taking Chances," pretty like a fine Sarah McLachlan single, was slyly infused with a bit of Eurythmics' "Here Comes the Rain Again" toward its end.

I think the soul medley and James Brown tribute is a glaring misstep, Vegas camp that doesn't work outside Vegas. She doesn't pull off "River Deep, Mountain High" with much zest in the encore, either, but she should leave "It's a Man's, Man's, Man's World" to Alicia Keys. There is, however, thematic continuity to the show – it's '80s-reviving intent declared with her opening cover of Cyndi Lauper's "I Drove All Night" – and an unmistakable pep in Céline's step. She seems revitalized somehow, as if eager to prove she not only can out-sing every offspring that ever blared "The Power of Love" into a hairbrush, she can keep up with them stylistically and commercially.

Again, does she succeed? Yes and no. She'll never be hip; she's too practical, too sanitized. Plus, she's got that voice, one of few that can keep from withering in the company of Streisand and Bocelli, and it doesn't always adapt to modernity. But bless her for trying. She's far more entertaining now, forging her way out of a glossy Vegas dead-end, than she was a decade ago, when it seemed like all she really wanted was to headline the Stardust.